kathryn bigelow

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not much work but several of these are vv dope. the hurt locker i guess is supposed to be pretty excellent?

http://extracine.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/sjff_02_img0584.jpg

Poll Results

OptionVotes
Point Break (1991) 9
Near Dark (1987) 9
Strange Days (1995) 1
The Hurt Locker (2008) 0
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) 0
The Weight of Water (2000) 0
Blue Steel (1990) 0
The Loveless (1982) 0


omar little, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 22:51 (seventeen years ago)

I AM AN F-B-I AGENT!

I'm glad the chihuahua beat it this wkend (latebloomer), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 22:59 (seventeen years ago)

she is my mom's favorite director

omar little, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:03 (seventeen years ago)

i remember liking Strange Days when it came out. I was 14.

the valves of houston (gbx), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:04 (seventeen years ago)

Near Dark, of course, but Point Break has batshit-awesome action scenes.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:04 (seventeen years ago)

oh wait shit i missed Point Break up there, dang

the valves of houston (gbx), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:06 (seventeen years ago)

i always have to watch strange days when it's randomly on cable.

horseshoe, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:15 (seventeen years ago)

Strange Days has that awful disturbing rape sequence, right? Glah.

Alex in SF, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:22 (seventeen years ago)

Near Dark is the pick btw.

Alex in SF, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:22 (seventeen years ago)

yeah that's the one. also starring angela basset's arms.

horseshoe, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:24 (seventeen years ago)

Looking good in that pic.

chap, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:25 (seventeen years ago)

Near Dark is on hulu! i will watch it tonight.

horseshoe, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 23:30 (seventeen years ago)

Strange Days, easy!

Nhex, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:25 (seventeen years ago)

Strange Days has that awful disturbing rape sequence, right? Glah.

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, October 21, 2008 6:22 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

oh yeah i forgot about that :-/

the valves of houston (gbx), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:26 (seventeen years ago)

Near Dark for me.

"We keep odd hours."

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:26 (seventeen years ago)

I remember how Strange Days was promoted as The Future as we were understanding how far the Information Highway would eventually stretch.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:30 (seventeen years ago)

hurt locker is pretty good!!

can i get all name-droppy and say when i interviewed her she was super intelligent, articulate and gracious?? and awesome?

s1ocki, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:33 (seventeen years ago)

I remember catching a screening of STRANGE DAYS and feeling physically torn between groans and lulz pretty much all the way through. Yet it feels as though if I go back and watch it now it might actually be better than it was then. Is that possible, or did it just suck ass?

my sweet coconut (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:39 (seventeen years ago)

I remember how Strange Days was promoted as The Future as we were understanding how far the Information Highway would eventually stretch.

And now Ralph Fiennes is everywhere on huge TV screens.

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:40 (seventeen years ago)

^^ lol

Pretty much peaked with NEAR DARK then.

my sweet coconut (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:42 (seventeen years ago)

1. Point Break Indo (2009)
aka "Point Break 2" - USA (working title)
!

mizzell, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:42 (seventeen years ago)

wow where are all the POINT BREAK fans???

max, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:43 (seventeen years ago)

POINT BREAK was and is awful.

my sweet coconut (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:43 (seventeen years ago)

point break is point great!

s1ocki, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:44 (seventeen years ago)

stfu rogermexico

max, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 02:45 (seventeen years ago)

lol get one functioning suck-o-meter

my sweet coconut (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:43 (seventeen years ago)

roger I believe you are now entering the DANGER ZONE

David R., Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:43 (seventeen years ago)

ya roger, get a dangerzone-o-meter. get ONE of them.

s1ocki, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:50 (seventeen years ago)

strange days does kind of suck and is sort of cringe-y about race sometimes in addition to the really hard-to-watch rape stuff, but then it is also kind of awesome? but i can't really defend that point of view. it's definitely ambitious.

horseshoe, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:51 (seventeen years ago)

its heart is in the right place!

horseshoe, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:51 (seventeen years ago)

^^^ should've been a pull quote on the poster

David R., Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:54 (seventeen years ago)

I still haven't seen the loveless

Edward III, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:56 (seventeen years ago)

I think I'm one of 5 people who saw near dark in the theatres

Edward III, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:56 (seventeen years ago)

i still have strange days on tape

I'm glad the chihuahua beat it this wkend (latebloomer), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:57 (seventeen years ago)

angela bassett is very beautiful and compelling in it! i have seen it so many times.

horseshoe, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 03:58 (seventeen years ago)

I've never understood how she could have been married to James Cameron.

Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 16:13 (seventeen years ago)

come on, two brainy '80s action directors at the top of their games, it seems like a natural fit

s1ocki, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 16:16 (seventeen years ago)

james cameron is a douche but he did make aliens

and what, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 16:17 (seventeen years ago)

Good while it lasted, I guess.

Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 16:18 (seventeen years ago)

if james cameron or ridley scott would just agree to make another aliens movie i would forgive them everything

s1ocki, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 16:22 (seventeen years ago)

ridley scott just signed on to make a film version of "the forever war"~

omar little, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 17:24 (seventeen years ago)

i know... he should make it aliens meets the forever war. as far as i'm concerned. that's what he should do.

s1ocki, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 17:25 (seventeen years ago)

i think kathryn bigelow's relative lack of work is a stain upon hollywood considering she's ten times better than some of these d-bags they put in the director's chair for big-budget action flicks.

anyway strange days is really good, i totally like it and anything that's wrong with it has more to do with some lame plot points and less to do with the directing. point break and near dark are great. i've heard k-19 is better than its non-existent rep might suggest. blue steel is solid. the trailers i've seen for the hurt locker look really good.

omar little, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 17:28 (seventeen years ago)

anything that's wrong with it has more to do with some lame plot points and less to do with the directing.

true!

horseshoe, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 17:30 (seventeen years ago)

k-19 is quite good, very thrilling and tragic. it's honest about trying to work in a very restrictive political culture w/o being all nutty red dawn about it or dimly allegorical like enemy at the gates was.

but everyone delivers in these goofy boris badenoff accents. whoever decided on that, way to ruin a movie.

goole, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 17:35 (seventeen years ago)

I only saw the '87-91 trio, so ND. It's time to do a fullout gay remake of Point Break.

why duz poll expire before we see Hurt Locker?

Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 18:45 (seventeen years ago)

I think I'm one of 5 people who saw near dark in the theatres

I'm one of the other four then.

Chris Barrus (Elvis Telecom), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 18:47 (seventeen years ago)

wtf @ hurt locker trailers being in italian

the valves of houston (gbx), Wednesday, 22 October 2008 18:52 (seventeen years ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Wednesday, 29 October 2008 00:01 (seventeen years ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

System, Thursday, 30 October 2008 00:01 (seventeen years ago)

realize that I had been dreaming of a movie called "Perfect Dark Thirty" after the n64 game

乒乓, Wednesday, 28 November 2012 20:34 (thirteen years ago)

oh god there was actually a sequel called perfect dark zero

perfect dark zero dark thirty

乒乓, Wednesday, 28 November 2012 20:36 (thirteen years ago)

not nearly as riveting as The Hurt Locker; suffers from being "important." Don't sweat the torture, it's all worth it in the end.

and really, gays, Chastain is not that good an actor yet.

saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, 3 December 2012 15:15 (thirteen years ago)

Don't sweat the torture, it's all worth it in the end.

stop quoting from John Kerry's confirmation hearings

the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 December 2012 15:31 (thirteen years ago)

three years pass...

My film class watched Strange Days tonight. I was always pretty forgiving of its stupidity, but how did I never notice how awful the acting (Angela Bassett being the exception) was until now?

rhymes with "blondie blast" (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 29 November 2016 04:09 (nine years ago)

four months pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFeWsDpy9y0

nope

, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 14:23 (eight years ago)

three months pass...

words on Detroit

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4753-the-daily-kathryn-bigelow-s-detroit

Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, 24 July 2017 17:48 (eight years ago)

three weeks pass...

So nobody who has seen and has any thoughts on this film? Saw it this morning, it's deeply upsetting, and not solely for reasons they intended, I think. Points for calling it a rebellion, for clearly showing police brutality, not just in the central scenes, but throughout the story. But there are things that just simply doesn't make sense, and as in Zero Dark Thirty I get the feeling that the film thinks it's critical of the state, but ends up covering the really dirty stuff up.

Frederik B, Friday, 18 August 2017 10:25 (eight years ago)

I have no interest in this one but I feel the need to rewatch ZD30, I've never really bought the notion of it as CIA propaganda despite Boal and Bigelow's moves

a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Friday, 18 August 2017 11:18 (eight years ago)

One thing that's completely fucked up is having a 30-year old man playing Carl Cooper, the 17-year old teenager who fired the starting pistol that began the whole thing. After Tamir Rice, that's honestly just unacceptable.

Frederik B, Friday, 18 August 2017 11:19 (eight years ago)

My two most hated moments in Zero Dark Thirty is of course when it's indicated that a lead from torture leads to the next step in the investigation, but also when a state official reprimands a CIA agent because of what happened in Iraq. I mean, that's critical of the CIA but it's completely letting Bush and Cheney off the hook for knowingly picking and choosing their intelligence.

Frederik B, Friday, 18 August 2017 11:20 (eight years ago)

i've only seen zd30 once and iirc crucial info which helps bag bin laden comes from ahem 'enhanced interrogation', which didn't happen in real life, so assuming my recollection is correct i'm happy to remain on the 'fuck kathryn bigelow' train despite believing point break to be a masterpiece

licking the yellow Toad next to the teleporter (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 18 August 2017 11:21 (eight years ago)

We were going to see Detroit but i read a few things like this http://thegrapevine.theroot.com/i-walked-out-of-detroit-because-wtf-man-1797338083 and we decided not to and then didn't even go to the movies after all.

As an ilxor, I am uncompromising (El Tomboto), Friday, 18 August 2017 11:31 (eight years ago)

I kinda get the idea that white people should see and think over this film, since it's a telling example of racism and white privilige both in it's story and in it's production. The more I read about it, the more this whole thing becomes a symptom of something very, very wrong. The responses that this was not Kathryn Bigelow's story to tell is mostly so damning because it still hasn't been told by black people before. The book on the events was written by a white writer, and relied mostly on interviews with the white people present, including the perpetrators. It honestly got me thinking how fucked up it is that there isn't a whole (recognized) subgenre of black testimonials. Like with the Holocaust, people read diaries, biographies, it's acknowledged that it's important that we delve into the experience of the Jews. But who does this with black Americans? Why is there no standard collection of diary entries from, like, any of the riots? Why was the first (?) African-American film on slavery Nate Parkers Birth of a Nation? I mean, at some point these stories should become everyones to tell, that, for me, is the importance of something like Son of Saul. But there's a whole first level of testimony that has been suppressed.

Frederik B, Friday, 18 August 2017 12:43 (eight years ago)

Btw I might be majorly wrong about this, of course, and if so I would love some examples of this kind of thing. Will read more.

Frederik B, Friday, 18 August 2017 12:48 (eight years ago)

I mean, right, there's 12 Years A Slave. But this feels like discussion for another thread.

As an ilxor, I am uncompromising (El Tomboto), Friday, 18 August 2017 13:30 (eight years ago)

i feel like the answer to these questions might be 'racism'

licking the yellow Toad next to the teleporter (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 18 August 2017 13:35 (eight years ago)

just a hunch

licking the yellow Toad next to the teleporter (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 18 August 2017 13:35 (eight years ago)

Yeah, the answer is clearly racism, I know that. And Steve McQueen is British.

Frederik B, Friday, 18 August 2017 13:47 (eight years ago)

four months pass...

Detroit seemed to go on forever. I think it took half-an-hour before there was even an effort to sketch in any of the characters. About all I got out of the whole thing was the Dramatics connection.

clemenza, Friday, 5 January 2018 06:25 (eight years ago)

one year passes...

k-19 is quite good, very thrilling and tragic. it's honest about trying to work in a very restrictive political culture w/o being all nutty red dawn about it or dimly allegorical like enemy at the gates was.

but everyone delivers in these goofy boris badenoff accents. whoever decided on that, way to ruin a movie.

― goole, Wednesday, 22 October 2008 17:35 (ten years ago)

Liam Neeson just reverts to an Irish accent by the end. Side effect of the radiation, probably.

Armand Frippanino (Noel Emits), Tuesday, 16 April 2019 11:41 (six years ago)

find me one liam neeson movie where he doesn't just give up the accent before the end, i challenge anyone

arli$$ and bible black (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 16 April 2019 11:49 (six years ago)

cannae be done!

arli$$ and bible black (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 16 April 2019 11:50 (six years ago)

thats not an irish accent

fremme nette his simplicitte (darraghmac), Tuesday, 16 April 2019 14:00 (six years ago)

is he serious is he not ooooOoOoh

fremme nette his simplicitte (darraghmac), Tuesday, 16 April 2019 14:00 (six years ago)

ullans?

point break is fantastic. zero dark thirty is torture propaganda that is good for me to poop on

findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 16 April 2019 16:26 (six years ago)

one year passes...

"The Loveless" would be halfway watchable if anyone other than DaFoe could act. Robert Gordon absolutely stinks. The extended, languid takes garnished with bad dialogue almost seem like a blueprint for Refn's "Too Old To Die Young".

SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Sunday, 10 May 2020 13:21 (five years ago)

five years pass...

I found A House of Dynamite gripping. The structure of it worked especially well.

the way out of (Eazy), Friday, 24 October 2025 19:02 (three months ago)

I liked it, but was ambivalent about the structure. I enjoyed seeing all of the different perspectives and understand why a more straightforward narrative might've made it difficult to juggle all of them at once. But I feel like the stop-and-start saps the momentum, especially since the second and third segments don't really complicate what you've already seen in the first one. And the ending does not provide a reward for the patient viewer.

jaymc, Friday, 24 October 2025 19:27 (three months ago)

i saw "the movie written by the guy who tried to cover up the NBC sex scandals? no thanks" and that's where Im at

Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Friday, 24 October 2025 19:35 (three months ago)

All the air goes out of the movie each time we circle back to the beginning.

The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 October 2025 19:45 (three months ago)

Every time Bigelow cut to an Ike photo on the wall, I laughed louder.

The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 October 2025 20:29 (three months ago)

There was the strange feeling shortly into this of "oh, this is a normal president." Makes sense that this would've been in pre-production a few years back, and it feels much more made for a Harris administration than the ones we've got.

But I dug it. Then again, I dug Don't Look Up, and both seem similar as far as finding a dramatic way to put us through something out there that could end the world.

the way out of (Eazy), Friday, 24 October 2025 22:47 (three months ago)

It's if Bigelow made the film for a future J. Hoberman book.

The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 October 2025 23:05 (three months ago)

*as if

The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 October 2025 23:05 (three months ago)

I enjoyed the loops back, and didn’t feel it missed anything by not complicating things — nor that it was trying to, as the premise of the entire film is about people trying to make decisions about individual, incomplete perspectives on extremely limited information. That we “learn” some things again, learn more things through some characters, and see different perspectives through others is meant to broaden our understanding of the individual confusions, not confer a readerly omniscience of which the participants are deprived.

One woman in my screening did scream “WHATT??!¡” at the ending, to punctured-balloon laughter from other punters.

fall of the house of urrsher (sic), Saturday, 25 October 2025 01:08 (three months ago)

This isn't spoiling anything important, but I imagine the budget involved in staging a gigantic Civil War reenactment for reasons tangential to the plot (versus having the same character at Target or something).

the way out of (Eazy), Saturday, 25 October 2025 01:16 (three months ago)

Timeloop structure bad, politics also bad but that was to be expected. Some fun scenes of good actors being TENSE.

a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Saturday, 25 October 2025 08:14 (three months ago)

The tense Deputy National Security Adviser managed to get on my nerves in a major way.

Bob Six, Saturday, 25 October 2025 09:42 (three months ago)

The movie is a direct lift of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario. Regardless of what you might think of her earlier books (speculative nonsense or illconsidered propaganda from a Joe Rogan repeat guest) it’s worth checking out, especially if you have any remote interest in this.

I didn’t mind the loops in the movie, and sometimes I found the callbacks legit clever (especially when you learn what happens on that SECDEF call). I think a case can be made that as you go up levels of power and decision making, the actual decision-makers are worse and more ill-prepared for their jobs. This doesn’t allow for a satisfying movie where the president is the main character of act 3, but maybe that’s the point?

Legit worried that folks’ takeaway from this isn’t “nuclear war is bad, we should avoid it” but “hfs we need to spend a trillion dollars on better interceptors like now!"

Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 26 October 2025 03:10 (three months ago)

I couldn't really blame anyone for that takeaway - the decision to make the attack come from an anonymous, unknowable source was presumably made to avoid the film becoming propaganda, but it has the opposite effect. Without a power taking responsibility, there can be no diplomatic alternatives, no way to reason - yes retaliating w/o knowing you're hitting the correct perpetrator is madness, but then it's a mad world, the US has unseen enemies and they are not interested in negotiating.

Meanwhile in the real world afaik sti only one country in the world has used nukes as a weapon of war.

a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 26 October 2025 07:33 (three months ago)

The movie is a direct lift of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario.

i have read the book but have not seem the bigelow movie. villeneuve has the option for the book iiuc, and I assume everyone involved has lawyers, so maybe not a *direct* lift?

https://deadline.com/2024/04/nuclear-war-movie-denis-villeneuve-legendary-dune-part-two-bestselling-book-1235876114/

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, 26 October 2025 17:25 (three months ago)

given the production timeline the bigelow thing might also be based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_the_North_Korean_Nuclear_Attacks_Against_the_United_States?

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, 26 October 2025 17:27 (three months ago)

At least one of those situation rooms depicted in the movie is under the now-razed East Wing.

the way out of (Eazy), Sunday, 26 October 2025 18:05 (three months ago)

the decision to make the attack come from an anonymous, unknowable source was presumably made to avoid the film becoming propaganda, but it has the opposite effect. Without a power taking responsibility, there can be no diplomatic alternatives, no way to reason

idk, i took it more that if we knew who the aggressor was, the movie would just be about how we dealt with that particular situation. maybe my biases are showing but i felt like the movie was more interested in conveying the idea that nuclear weapons are an unsolvably dangerous problem, not because america has Big Bad Evil Enemies who can't be reasoned with, but because our shit doesnt work and everyone involved is a fallible human, from the button-pushers in Alaska to the president. and when the chips are down they will start barfing, bickering with each other, committing suicide, or all three.

like the country who launched couldn't have known that we would be unaware of who launched - it wasnt an evil devious plan, its just the inherent incompetence which is baked into human-run systems, but which few decision makers are humble enough to account for. idk if i really get much of a politics out of it beyond "there is no safe way for nuclear weapons to exist." like the statistics about how owning a gun "for protection" makes it exponentially more likely that you will due by gunshot - the very existence of systems designed to protect us will ensure our destruction. i loathed the politics of Bigelows war on terror films and again maybe i'm seeing what i want to see, but i enjoyed how this takes such a dim view of the national security state.

waste of compute (One Eye Open), Sunday, 26 October 2025 19:20 (three months ago)

obv "nuclear weapons are bad" isnt a groundbreaking take, but when i was expecting some 24-ass "there are bad people in the world who will stop at nothing to get us" type shit, it was nice to instead get "everyone tasked with keeping us alive is going to be fucking around yakking about baseball games and potato chip crumbs until it too late"

waste of compute (One Eye Open), Sunday, 26 October 2025 19:30 (three months ago)

And focusing almost entirely on 18 minutes really drives home the reality that if/when this happens, it’ll likely be over before we know it’s begun.

the way out of (Eazy), Sunday, 26 October 2025 20:20 (three months ago)

Well I mean does anyone really expect the national security state to be able to stop an already launched nuclear weapon? The horror is preordained from the get go, the only real dilemma is whether to launch some nukes yourself to add to the carnage, and I feel like the film gives a hawkish viewer enough of an argument to go "yes, they should". But either way, Chicago's toast, and nothing anyone in govt did has any influence at all on that - the reasons are unknowable, because the enemy is unknown.

a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 26 October 2025 21:13 (three months ago)

given the production timeline the bigelow thing might also be based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_the_North_Korean_Nuclear_Attacks_Against_the_United_States?

It's a different scenario (that book also has Trump as president and acting accordingly), but the author is a good bsky follow if you're into this: @armscontrolwonk.bsky.social

Elvis Telecom, Monday, 27 October 2025 01:38 (three months ago)

Timely viewing in the wake of this news.

birdistheword, Monday, 27 October 2025 03:03 (three months ago)


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